"6 Hunters ran out of fuel" 1956

[Tim McLelland]

From my new book, out in a couple of months (Hunter - Crecy Publishing):-

One of the best-known incidents took place on 8 February 1956 when six students (accompanied by two instructors) from the Day Fighter School
took off from West Raynham to begin a standard four-versus-four air combat exercise at 45,000 feet. Weather conditions were poor but the Met forecast suggested that things would improve, but despite this the Air Fighting Development School (one of the CFE’s component units) had cancelled flying for the day. The combat exercise progressed well and, because of the Hunter’s fuel capacity, the ensuing dogfight was relatively brief and
the Hunters began their return to base.
As they returned to the overhead at West Raynham at 20,000 feet it became clear that the weather had actually deteriorated and the airfield was now sitting under a 400-foot cloud base with fog restricting visibility to 1,000 yards. With only twenty minutes of fuel remaining, the decision was made to divert to Marham and the Hunters descended to 2,000 feet, separated by thirty-second intervals between pairs. Unfortunately, Marham’s air traffic
controllers were unfamiliar with the new fighter (especially fuel-starved ones), and to make matters worse the fog had also begun to roll over Marham too, so when the first pair popped out under the low cloud they almost immediately flew straight into the fog. The first aircraft’s
pilot (Red One) initiated an overshoot while his wingman (Red Two, who had lost sight of the leader) pressed on and successfully landed after a flight of just forty-two minutes. His leader proceeded to fly three more circuits before finally catching sight of the runway and landing, even though his aircraft ran out of fuel shortly after rolling off the runway.
The next pair fared less well and Yellow Three (who could only snatch brief glimpses of the ground) elected to climb away and eject. Meanwhile Yellow Four opted to continue his approach but crashed into a field just a couple of miles from Marham. Yellow Two, with just twelve gallons of fuel remaining, decided to abort his approach and climb away before ejecting. Yellow One, having made a low approach, was forced to climb away after spotting trees in his path, but after making a circuit of the airfield at 150 feet he settled onto the approach again only to run out of fuel, but landed straight ahead with a dead engine. Red Three abandoned his approach and climbed to 4,000 feet where he ejected, while Red Four abandoned his approach at 600 feet and climbed away until the aircraft flamed out at 2,500 feet, at which point he ejected. In just forty-five minutes a total of six Hunters had been destroyed or damaged (and one pilot killed) for no reason other than a shortage of fuel.

Hope it's of interest